A warning to our friends about David Furcas

Here in Houston, a police agent operating under the name David “Furcas” (real name David Allen Hayes) claims to be a “progressive cop” who wants to support leftist and people’s movements. Over the past months, he has vigorously attempted to insert himself in every left space he can find, with little or no political articulation about his actual attraction to those groups.

At times, he has claimed to be an “HPD cold-case murder detective” or to others he claimed to be involved in investigating “burglary.” Following an investigation into this story which pointed to these claims being lies, David Allen Hayes claimed to someone else to be an elected Sheriff. David’s stories are a diverse set of lies.

So what do we actually know about David Allen Hayes? After a year of careful investigation and discussion, a group of activists have decided to share the following information:

1. Despite his insistence that he is not involved in political investigations, David Allen Hayes has consistently been involved in police activity around political movements, pointing to a background as political police. In 2007, he gloated about being around for the arrest of two members of Sin Fronteras who chained themselves to a detention center.

In 2007, David Furcas bragged about watching the arrest of activists.

For at least 7 years this police agent has been active in political arrests, and even joked about it.

2. His sudden emergence as a “friendly cop” corresponds with the timeline of Occupy, when a whole series of police programs were targeted at Occupy, including an assassination plot directed at Occupy Houston that involved a plan to execute leading members of the movement through sniper fire. This plot became known through a Freedom of Information Act request.

3. Despite his claim of being a “progressive” cop, DAH has never made a serious effort to this effect. If this were true, he could go to press with information about the assassination plot against Houston activists or other outrages, but he has made no such effort.

4. David Allen Hayes has engaged in sexual advances/activity with activists (including with those who are MUCH younger than he is), and foolishly been tolerated by people who should know much better.

5. An analysis of David Allen Hayes’ Facebook reveals ZERO interaction with other cops. Why would someone whose career is that of a cop have an absence of public interaction with other cops? Why is there not a single photograph of him in a standard police uniform? Is this because he is on a particular plain clothes assignment, and that his Facebook page is a public face? For example, is David Furcas an agent of the Criminal Intelligence Division, Houston’s political police who do not operate in uniform?

6. David Allen Hayes has inserted himself into AT LEAST two dozen different left circles, organizations, projects, and community organizations.

7. At a Trayvon Martin demonstration in the River Oaks/Post Oak area, David Allen Hayes is known to have first been a part of the demonstration, but then to have excused himself, citing “responsibilities” that he had, and then going and joining the police. Once again, this is not the behavior of a murder detective, but rather someone on political assignment.

The basic reality of this situation is that there is no way to determine the actual extent to which David Allen Hayes is engaged in intelligence gathering, and that it is the responsibility of radical people to set clear lines of demarcation with agents of the state.

Once it is clear that a person is spying on progressive movements, they should be exposed and isolated. They are enemies. They wish us ill. They do us damage. And across the country, such people have not only informed on progressive movements, but also “set people up” for arrests and persecution.

Some of our friends have mistakenly claimed that they “know not to speak about politics in front of him.” Consider the way that this agent’s very presence allows him to chart out who relates to who, to develop lists of people, and the number of members regularly active in various projects. Consider the federal charges and lives that were destroyed after years of intelligence work and operations by informants like Brandon Darby or Karen Sullivan.

It is an example of classic denial to continue to act as if we don’t know, when (in fact) we know. The government (starting with Bush after 9/11, but continued by the Obama/Holder administration) has spent billions spying and infiltrating within U.S. borders. It is naive and dangerous to ignore this. We urge you to take this warning about David Furcas seriously. And we suggest that all of us (in progressive politics) have a discussion about what our procedures and standards should be when such a person is exposed for what he is.

Some have argued that if he were on political assignment, he would not be operating publicly. Again, this is naïve. The Houston police, including CID, have a long history of operating in this way. Houston is supposedly one of the few cities where “the police work with the protesters.” Houston and Miami are the only two major cities where Occupy was never formally evicted, but instead led to collapse from endless bureaucratic regulation, infiltration, and police collaboration by some individuals who believed they were being made into our “leaders.”

One activist of who was arrested by David Allen Hayes during the Sin Fronteras protest of 2007 recently wrote about these events:

“The night I spent in jail after the Sin Fronteras action at which David arrested me, I was shivering in the cold, crowded holding cell, my teeth chattering, my clothes still soaked with water from the hose the pigs ran on me while cutting the lock off my neck, when the cops brought a transgender woman in. She was panicking and struggling, probably frightened for her safety as she was being put into the men’s unit with a bunch of leering, catcalling guys. The cops working in the jail responded with brutality, dragging her across the concrete floor by her hair and putting her in pain-compliance holds, twisting her arms behind her back as she cried and screamed in pain and fear…

David was not one of those jail guards. But he is an arresting officer. He takes people to jail. As a political case, I was something of an anomaly in the jail that night, but what I witnessed was not anomalous. It seemed to strike everyone but me as a totally normal occurrence for that environment, just part of the daily routine of the Houston city jail.

As an arresting officer, it could be argued that David has no control over the conditions in the jails – he relinquishes control over his prisoners when he releases them into the custody of the jail. But cops like David know what happens in the jails and prisons of America, and they continue to place people into these environments, over and over again… This is what it is to be a cop. The daily practice of providing material support for oppressive institutions, through the use of physical force. It really doesn’t matter to me in the slightest how David “feels” about it, what he “believes,” in comparison to the weight of what he DOES. He puts people in handcuffs and throws them helpless into the belly of the beast.

When I say “All cops are bastards,” it’s not just a radical pose to me: I fucking mean it. It doesn’t mean no cops are “nice” people, or that no “good” person could ever become a cop. It means the ACT OF BEING A COP is an immoral, despicable act. For anyone to whom revolutionary politics is more than a game, it should be completely clear that divided loyalties are impossible here – anyone who, under order from their superiors, would obediently place you in handcuffs and take you to jail, cannot possibly be a comrade, and has sided with the enemy in a very real and concrete sense.”

It might be worth asking: if a cop were actually to make an attempt to “come over to the other side,” what would that look like? Such a thing would necessarily involve a one way flow of information, where the cop would be assigned a single, accountable point of contact in the movement, and would never receive any information, and would not be allowed to contact anyone else. This is exactly the opposite of the behavior of David Allen Hayes, who insists on inserting himself into every circle imaginable, and who refuses to be constrained by the demands of the movement.

Set standards. Stop associating with this agent. Share these facts with anyone involved with him, handle police informant activity with the care and seriousness that it requires, and let’s protect our movement together.

A previous draft of this article mentioned a person who has brought groups of police to movement events. After some reflection, we felt that this was both a distraction from the overall point about David Furcas, and that without further information being known, that it was inappropriate. We have removed it.

Where are you getting your info from?!? You have know idea what you are talking about. Before you going around trashing the reputation of a good man, make sure you get your facts straight. He does not hide the fact that he is a cop. He did not lie about being either a homicide or burglary detective. He was both. He interacts with all of these causes because he believes in them and takes the risk of standing up for them. David was my roommate for over a year and never once did he do anything remotely resembling an “agent”. This is absolutely ridiculous and you should be ashamed of putting such utter garbage out there. I’m sure you will find that many will agree with me as he is a genuine, caring and loving friend to many. There are good and bad apples in every line of work. Just because David is a cop, doesn’t make him a bad person. I’m sorry that you have had bad experiences with the police, but I’m positive it’s never involved him.

I sometimes used to wonder if David was actually a secret agent. But then I set down my hash pipe and admitted how big of a paranoid lunatic I was being. Whoever wrote this and compiled such compelling and sourced evidence *cough* clearly hasn’t spent much time with David or his family. He was a progressive-minded person well before he became a police officer, and will be for the rest of his life. This city and this country would be a hell of a lot better off if there were more people like him in law enforcement.

P.S. David is open and public about what he does with his life. I highly doubt the writers of this article would have the balls to stand up and put a face to their claims. They won’t dare risk their own reputations, yet the freely try to tarnish others. So upsetting, especially from people who claim to be a part of radical political movements, such as Occupy. You are just further dividing us. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE REAL BAD GUYS WANT YOU TO BE DOING.